“Okay, so you’re a good guy?” Nurse Joy asked.

“Yes,” Chrys replied. Everyone was sitting in the lobby in order to settle things down. Joy and Chansey were opposite Chrys, Sunset, and Gallade. Vulpix was napping on the table in between them and the passed out Riolu was laying in the lap of the unicorn nurse. Sunset had explained everything to Joy and Chansey. It was tough for them to believe, but Joy ended up casting the same spell Sunset did to check if Chrys was connected to a hive mind. Once she confirmed he wasn’t, she was able to relax a bit.

That spell must be something all unicorns are capable of and know, Chrys thought, scratching his chin.

Sunset spoke up next. “His leg is in bad shape-“

Chrys cut her off. “And my ribs.”

“And his ribs. We were hoping to get some assistance, but we didn’t exactly get the warmest welcome,” Sunset explained.

“Shouldn’t have expected you would have,” Joy said. “Follow me. I’ll take a look at your leg.”

“And my ribs.”

“And your ribs,” Joy said with a giggle. She set down Riolu on the couch and got up, moving towards the hallway that they all initially entered the lobby throught. Sunset followed and Gallade picked up Chrys, cradling him like a baby, much to his dismay. He didn’t question it however as they moved towards a room at the end of the hallway. Once they entered, Gallade set down Chrys on the table in the center of the room.

“Okay sir, I’m going to cast a quick x-ray spell to assess the damage and we’ll take whatever actions necessary from there,” Joy explained. Chrys nodded and waited. Joy’s horn briefly lit up with a pink aura. Once it went out she nodded and wrote a few notes on a clipboard she got somewhere along the way.

“How you are not screaming in pain right now is beyond me. You have a ruptured achilles,” Joy explained.

“... That’s not good. It definitely hurts, but I guess that all the adrenaline I’ve released recently reduced the amount of pain I felt,” Chrys assumed. “How about my ribs.” Joy’s horn lit up again. Are you kidding me. How is everyone forgetting about my damn ribs. And why is it called an achilles here? That doesn’t make any sense. I guess they have the same legend, or a similar one.

“Only one seems to be broken and hence an easy fix. So is the ankle, but that will hurt a bit and it’ll need to be wrapped after the spell works its magic. That will also take me a while,” Joy explained. Chrys blinked repeatedly.

“I wish humans had healing magic that fixed broken bones in minutes,” Chrys said. Joy nodded.

“It definitely comes in handy. Medical magic has come a long way. In order to become a nurse or doctor anywhere nowadays, you need to learn these spells, and be able to perform them. Now I’ll need you to brace yourself. This will hurt a bit.” Chrys nodded. “I’m doing the rib first.” With that, Joy’s horn lit again, and this time Chrys felt something. It wasn’t a terrible pain, but it was definitely something that he didn’t want to experience too often. It took only ten seconds at most for his rib to feel completely fine again.

“Wow. That’s really impressive. Thank you,” Chrys said.

“Just doing my job. Now the ankle. Since the spell pulls at the tendon and forces it back together, this will hurt a lot more. Brace yourself,” she said again. Chrys held onto the table, clenching his hands around its edges. Joy’s horn lit and he immediately felt an excruciating pain. He bit his bottom lip, but stopped when he saw tremendous fangs extending out of his mouth and scraping along his chin.

“Why didn’t I see those before?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“They’re retractable fangs. They pop out whenever you want them to, or in your case, not when you want them to,” the nurse explained. Chrys just nodded, trying to make the fangs retract so he could focus on something other than the pain in his ankle. Once he got them to work with him, Sunset spoke up.

“There’s another thing about you that’s also been bugging me,” Sunset said.

“That is...”

“You don’t seem to have any wings. All changelings, regardless of their subspecies, have wings,” Sunset explained.

“Fine by me. If there is anything I don't wanna be doing, it’s flying. And how would that even work? The wings would need to be huge to lift up something or someone my size,” Chrys remarked, waiting for the long and complicated explanation on how it worked.

“Magic,” replied both mares.

“Of course.” Chrys sighed, deciding not to question it any further, and he went back to waiting for his ankle to heal. Another painful minute went by before a question that ate at Chrys since they met the nurse rose to the forefront of his mind. “You have a Chansey with you, which makes sense for a nurse to have, but why do you have a Riolu?” he asked.

“Two things. One, Riolu isn’t my pokémon. She lives in the surrounding forest, but comes here almost daily to help the sick and injured pokémon, as well as bring some in sometimes,” she explained.

“I see.”

“What’s the second thing?” Sunset asked.

“Just because I’m a nurse doesn’t mean I would only have a Chansey. Even if that is the case for me, I can catch more pokémon. I just choose not to,” Joy said, slightly miffed.

She must get that a lot, Chrys thought. The rest of the healing session remained silent. It took Joy another three minutes to tie the tendon back together. Once she finished, her horn dimmed and she wiped a bead of sweat of her forehead. She then grabbed a roll of medical tape, took off Chrys’ sock and shoe, and tightly wrapped his ankle.

“Okay... all done. Now walk on it,” she instructed. Chrys got up and started moving. To his surprise, he could walk perfectly normal. There was however a minor pain still lingering in his ankle, but it was bearable and would probably go away in a week or so.

“It feels fine,” said the changeling. “Thanks.”

“Like I said, just doing my job,” Joy replied with a smile. “We should probably go back and check on-“

BOOM

“Riolu and Vulpix...”

Sunset sprinted towards the lobby with worry on her face, Gallade following suit. Joy, Chrys, and Chansey did more of a jog to get to the origin of the explosion. When the lobby was in view, they saw Sunset standing completely still and Gallade ready for a fight. When they entered the lobby, their jaws dropped. A massive hole was next to the entrance to the Pokémon Center. What stood in that hole made everyone freeze.

“UUURRRRR!!!”

“OH COME THE FUCK ON!!!” Chrys yelled in frustration. The same, or what he presumed to be the same, Ursaring from before stood in the hole in the wall. Before anyone could react, a massive ball formed in Ursarings hands. It let the ball fly at the closest thing to it, which happened to be Vulpix. This sent the fox pokémon flying across the room into a wall.

“Vulpix!” Sunset cried, running towards her fallen companion. The next blast was aimed at Riolu, but she swiftly dodged it by doing some backflips right when it was about to hit her, and it blew up on the ground instead. As she landed her last flip, she transferred into a Quick Attack, hitting the Ursaring in the midsection, causing it to stumble back a bit.

Nurse Joy and Chansey went to Sunset and Vulpix, no doubt to try and heal it. Gallade followed, probably to protect them all in case an attack got deflected towards them.

I have an idea, but it depends on what Riolu can do to that thing. The Quick Attack didn’t phase it much, Chrys thought. He scanned the room, looking for Sunset’s bag. When he found it on the chair by the side of the entrance that wasn’t ransacked, he sprinted over to it. This action caught the Ursaring’s attention, and it fired a Focus Blast at him this time. Chrys used his Call of Duty knowledge, and dolphin dived toward the chair, making the blast miss its mark and hit the wall behind him. His dive took him behind the chair, so he reached over and pulled Sunset’s bag to him.

She has to have one in here, Chrys thought as he rummaged through the bag. He dug his hand to the bottom of the bag, feeling something round. He pulled it out and it was exactly what he was looking for. A sphere that was the size of a ping pong ball and was half red, half white, and a black ring was wrapped around it. A white button rested on top of the ring, a button that he quickly found and pressed. The ball extended in his hand to the size of a baseball. Perfect. If I get the Ursaring in this, then everything will be fine. Even if it doesn’t stay in, it buys us time to regroup. Now lets see what’s going on here.

Chrys poked his head up from behind the chair to see where he needed to throw the ball to complete his plan. What he saw wasn’t pretty. Riolu was unable to stand straight. She was on one knee, badly hurt with cuts and bruises all over her body. The Ursaring was standing over her, looking about ready to pounce. Riolu was closer to Chrys than the Ursaring was, so he changed his plan. Since the ball would get to her faster, he hurled it at Riolu. Right when Ursaring was about to use a Hammer Arm attack to put Riolu out of commission for good, the ball hit Riolu’s head, and she entered the ball. This made Ursaring turn its attention to Chrys again, and it proceeded to charge him.

“Fuckmylifefuckmylifefuckmylife!” he yelled in panic, running away as fast as his legs could carry him, which wasn’t as fast as he could probably go when fully healed. The Ursaring never gained any distance, but neither did Chrys. “A little help Gallade!”

The pokémon in question, quite literally, jumped to action, landing in between Chrys and the hibernator pokémon. Gallade released a flurry of punches and kicks that made the Ursaring cry out in pain as they all hit their marks. The combo was wrapped up with a roundhouse that sent the bear flying a few feet, landing on its backside.

“Gallade, use Thunderbolt!” Sunset commanded. Gallade wrapped itself in raging sparks of electricity, letting a massive beam of them hit the Ursaring, making it fly through the hole in the wall that it created, back into the forest whence it came.

“Holy shit. I just saw a blastoff in person,” he muttered to himself, dumbfounded. And that Gallade is something else. Ursaring wasn’t a match for him and it was smacking around Riolu- wait. My Riolu? Chrys looked over to where the ball had landed. Sure enough, only the ball was there, Riolu nowhere to be seen. He walked over to the ball and picked it up.

“Huh. Not how I expected that to happen,” Chrys said. He threw the ball and out came Riolu, looking no better than when she went in. She looked up to Chrys, a stoic expression on her face.

“Thanks,” she said. Chrys stared blankly at her in disbelief. “You saved my life. I’m sorry for attacking you earlier.”

She looks like shit, he thought, kneeling to get eye level with her. “You okay?” he asked. Riolu nodded no, and tears began welling up in her eyes. Chrys sat next to his new pokémon, rubbing her back.

“I was completely helpless,” she sobbed. Chrys continued rubbing her back as Nurse Joy, Sunset, and the other pokémon watched with sad glances. Vulpix, who Chansey healed with a Softboil, was tearing up as well.

“Shoulda seen me when I was failing to run away from it. You handled yourself much better than I did, not to mention you weren’t at 100 percent,” Chrys said. “I think we could make a good team, you and I.” Riolu’s eyes widened. “We could improve ourselves together. I also wanna take down Chrysalis, and by your reaction to me, you do as well.”

“Who doesn’t want to take down Chrysalis. She’s a tyrannical mennace,” Riolu remarked, beginning to calm down a bit. “And besides, you caught me. I kinda have to go with you now.”

“That’s not true. I can release you if you don’t wanna come with me. It’s your choice,” Chrys said, eagerly waiting for her response.

“You know, I think I could use this experience. Is it okay with you Nurse Joy.” The mare in question giggled.

“I’m happy with whatever you decide, Riolu. I can handle things here with Chansey,” Joy replied with a smile and Chansey gave her a cheerful grin. Riolu nodded, sniffling and wiping her remaining tears away.

“Okay then... uh.”

“Chrys.”

“Chrys. I’ll go with you,” Riolu said, smiling.

“Thank you. This should be the beginning of one hell of a trip.”

“You can say that again,” Sunset said with a roll of her eyes, causing Riolu to giggle a bit and Vulpix to explode with laughter. “You really are way too easy.”

“We should get you patched up now,” Chrys said to Riolu, ignoring Sunset’s comments.

The rest of the day went by uneventfully. Riolu got medical treatment for her wounds in her two battles that day and would be in one of the hospital rooms for a while. The rest of the gang got checked into their own rooms for the night. Chrys was standing in his room with a towel around his waist, since he had to get himself and his clothes washed. Nurse Joy had also promised him a new set of clothes, since one set of clothes was not going to be very useful if he would be traveling around the world for a good portion of his life now. A few minutes of pacing went by before someone knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Gallade,” the blade pokémon responded. Chrys walked over to the door and opened it. Gallade threw a backpack at him and left. Chrys briefly stared down the hallway before closing the door.

Dick, he thought to himself, picking up the bag and opened its main pouch, finding two new sets of clothes. Nurse Joy was polite enough to give him several undergarments, all black pairs of boxers, and he immediately put one of them on. Even though he was alone, he was still not comfortable without clothes on, especially in his new body. He was given a emerald green t-shirt and a plain white t-shirt, light gray sweatpants and brown sweatpants, and several pairs of socks. He put on the white t and light gray sweatpants, slipped on the socks, and looked at him in the mirror.

“I look like a fuckin’ drug dealer,” he said aloud. He walked away from the mirror and back to his new backpack, which was solid black. He began rummaging through other pouches to see if there was anything else inside. In the smaller pouch in front of the main one, was a emerald green winter cap. The hat had a hole in it for his horn to fit through, so he put it on and went back to the mirror.

Thank god the color isn’t black. Otherwise I’d really look like a drug dealer, he thought, taking the hat off as he remembered that it wasn’t cold outside. After putting that back in the bag, he opened one of the side pouches, and was surprised to find several pokéballs inside. He closed the pouch, as he didn’t need them at this moment in time, and went to the other side pouch. This pouch was empty so he closed it up and placed the bag at the door. He looked up to the clock, noticing that it was 7:30 at night. He blinked at that.

Holy shit. Wasn’t it just morning? Was I really in here that long? he thought as he moved to exit the room. Might as well see if the have dinn- oh wait I eat emotions. Shit. I really need to figure out how to do that. He decided to leave the room anyway, as he had nothing else better to do.

Chrys proceeded to walk down the hallway the way Gallade went, as it was towards the lobby, so he’d probably find Sunset there. Sure enough, Sunset was sitting in a booth in a dedicated cafeteria area, eating something while staring at a large TV screen. What was on the TV seemed to be a pokémon battle of some kind. Although he was curious, Chrys didn’t care too much about it, and he continued moving until he came into Sunset’s view.

“Yo,” she said, not taking her eyes off of the TV.

“What’re you watching?” Chrys asked, glancing back to the screen.

“It’s a gym battle,” she replied.

“They televise those?” he asked, sitting down in the booth.

“Yeah. It gives people a chance to study the gym leaders so they can come in with a full on strategy or a general game plan of some kind. I also find it very entertaining,” she explained.

“Cool. So what’s the league’s format here?”

“I assume you know the basics of how a Pokémon League works.” Chrys nodded.

“Yeah. Eight badges, huge tournament, Champions League,” he said.

“Basically, but I’ll go into further detail. So there are many gyms across the country, but, like you said, you only need eight badges to get into the Pokémon League,” she started. “The Pokémon League is being held in the Crystal Empire this year, and it has the Crystal Ponies scrambling to get things ready. Fortunat-,” Chrys cut her off.

“There are Crystal Ponies?” he asked baffled.

“Oh right, you aren’t from here. Yeah, they get that name mainly due to the fact that their coats have this gorgeous crystalline sheen to them, although I think their bones are also as hard as crystals or actual crystals, so that’s a thing,” she said.

“Quite the thing indeed,” Chrys stated, flabbergasted.

“Anyway,” Sunset continued, “They built several stadiums because they hosted the Equestria Games, so they don’t need to build more. They may have to reconfigure some of them and make battlefields on them, but they don’t have to do much construction past that.” Chrys blinked again, ignoring the question of ‘what’s the Equestria Games,’ and dismissed it as some sort of athletic competition.

“So if someone were to collect eight badges, they can compete in the league tournament?” he asked for clarification.

“Yup. Literally what I just said. Were you thinking of trying it out?” she asked. Chrys nodded.

“Yeah. It should be a hell of a lot of fun. Besides, what else am I doing after we get to the good changelings hive,” he said.

“True. I think they even have a gym there. It’s relatively new, though, so it would be a pretty good starting point.”

“How far away is the hive?”

“About a day or two by train.” Chrys blinked.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, and this town doesn’t have a train station, so here’s my plan.” She took out a map from her bag. “We’re here.” Sunset pointed to a forest in the western area of the map. “If we head southeast to Las Pegasus, we can catch a train straight to the Badlands, where the hive is located. We can probably get to LP in about a week or two by walking,” Sunset explained. Chrys sighed at the name of the city before making any comments.

“Well I don’t have any better ideas, so that sounds like a plan to me,” Chrys said, turning back to the TV, seeing a Gourgeist getting slammed down with a beam attack of some kind.

God I really wanna eat food. I’m starving, he thought for some reason, looking to what Sunset was eating. It seemed to be a soup of some kind, but he really couldn’t tell what it was exactly.

“I wanna try eating normal food,” Chrys blurted out.

“Um... why?” Sunset asked, tilting her head.

“I don’t know how to eat love Sunset. I have no clues as to how that would even work. If I try eating real food, maybe I’ll get luck and be able to get nourishment from it,” Chrys explained. Sunset threw him a coin after his rant.

“Get a donut or something,” she said, turning her attention back to her soup.

“Not the best form of nourishment, but okay.” Chrys got up and went to the counter. Upon approaching it, he saw a brown earth pony stallion with a short, brown mane and mustache working behind the counter. He was wearing a white apron and had a white chefs hat with a pokéball logo on it. The man, who was occupied with something else, turned to the changeling. He didn’t even bat an eyelash as he greeted Chrys.

“Hello sir, welcome to the PokéCafé. My name is Brooklyn T. Guy. How may I help you this evening?” said Brooklyn Guy in a very thick, stereotypical Brooklyn accent.

“Uh... yeah. Can I get a donut?” Chrys asked. Why the fuck is this guy’s name Brooklyn Guy? Is there a Brooklyn here? If so, I never want to find myself in it.

“I am going to need to know what kind of donut sir,” Brooklyn Guy responded.

“Um... chocolate?” Chrys said, still confused. Brooklyn Guy took the donut off of a wrack behind him and unceremoniously placed it on the counter with a napkin under it.

“That’ll be one bit sir.” Chrys flipped the coin on the counter and took his donut. “Very cool. Thank you for your service,” he said sarcastically, turning back to whatever he was doing before Chrys’ purchase.

Well he certainly acts like he’s from Brooklyn. I can’t fuckin’ stand the Islanders, Chrys thought, as he sat down in the booth. Sunset gave him a puzzled look.

“What was that about? He wasn’t like that with me,” she said. Chrys immediately knew the answer, face palming since he didn’t realize it sooner.

“He wasn’t scared about serving a changeling, obviously. But the reason he was an asshole to me is because he was annoyed that he had to. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” Chrys said as he picked up the donut. “Welp, here goes nothing.” Chrys took a bit out of the donut, expecting either flavor or a fever. What he got as he chewed on the donut surprised him.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing?’” Sunset asked.

“I don’t taste anything. It tastes like nothing. Try it for me, just so we can clarify that it’s me and not the donut.” Chrys haned the donut to Sunset. She took a bite out of it and placed it back down.

“It’s you. That is definitely a chocolate donut, albeit a shitty one. Try this,” Sunset said, as she pulled a blue box-like item out of her pocket. She opened the box and took out a bar wrapped in white paper from it, which Chrys recognized as gum. Chrys heavily sighed as he took the gum. He opened the wrapper and popped the gum into his mouth, hoping for the best. Again, he was greeted with a taste of nothing, and he shook his head to let Sunset know what he was experiencing, spitting out the gum into the napkin he got with the donut.

Tasteless gum is the worst, he thought.

“Damn,” was all she said.

“I guess we have to assume that I absolutely need to eat love and stuff. How long can I go without food?” Chrys asked.

“About three weeks. Same as a human,” she replied.

“Okay. That means we can only take one week to get to Las Pegasus, catch the train, and go to the Badlands to have this Thorax guy teach me how to do the thing,” Chrys said, summing up there plan.

“Yup. We’ll need to go tomorrow. We don’t have any time to waste here. At least I know for a fact that you can drink water to keep hydrated and don’t have to drink emotions only,” Sunset said.

“Thank god. We should get a lot of that.”

“Yeah.” As Sunset said that, she saw a medical rollaway cart being rolled out by Nurse Joy. Sitting up on top of it was Riolu, who had bandages wrapped all over her body that made her look like a mummy.

“Jesus Christ. The damage was that bad,” Chrys stated, shocked.

“Yup. That Ursaring done fucked me up good,” Riolu responded, imitating a southern accent.

“Is she okay to even stand up?” Sunset asked.

“Yeah, but leave those bandages on for a couple days. Pokémon heal much faster than ponies, so she’ll be fine after that and they won’t need to be reapplied. No fighting though,” Joy said sternly.

“You got it Doc. But why didn’t you heal her with magic?” Chrys replied.

“Fighting type pokémon don’t have great reactions to magic. Their bodies receive them as a psychic type move, and they feel excruciating pain. I’d only ever use those methods on one if one of their bones was completely mangled, which they weren’t in Riolu’s case. The procedures also don’t work on dark types whatsoever, since they’re completely immune psychic type abilities ” Joy explained.

“That’s pretty interesting. What would they do to a pokémon such as Gallade?” Chrys responded. Riolu proceeded to get off of the rollaway and sat next to her new trainer.

“Good question. Gallade would be fine, since he has another type to counterbalance the magic so he wouldn’t feel pain, and it also doesn’t totally block it out. When Riolu evolves, she’ll be able to receive magical treatments, due to Lucario’s steel type characteristics,” Joy said. Chrys nodded in understanding.

“Thank you for everything Nurse Joy,” Sunset cut in.

“No problem. I assume you’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

“Yeah. If we don’t, I could die of hunger,” Chrys glumly stated. Riolu’s eyes shot up.

“Why!?!” she yelled, panicked. “I have to repay you for what you did for me! I can’t do that if you die!”

“Chill out. Firstly, you don’t need to repay me at all,” he said, petting Riolu’s head. “Secondly, it’s because I... don’t know how to eat. We’ll have to explain that to you since you were asleep when we were going over it with Joy.” So they did. They told Riolu everything they had told Nurse Joy about Chrys after Vulpix beat her. The canine’s jaw dropped after she heard everything.

“That’s a lot to take in,” she said, staring blankly at the table. Chrys continued to pet her head.

“We can dwell on that later. Right now, I need to get assloads of water bottles, my clothes, and some sleep.” Nurse Joy tossed him a plastic bag. He looked inside to find his Hunter Pence shirt, black pants, and a pair of socks. Something very important was missing however.

“Thanks, but where’s my underwear.”

“I had to throw them out,” Joy replied, a hand held over her face stifling her giggles.

“Why?” Chrys asked, dreading the highly probable answer.

“The stains wouldn’t come out.” At this, everyone burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter at the Newbloods expense. Chrys picked up Riolu, put her on the table, got out of the booth, and began walking away.

“Yo Stains, where do you think you’re going,” Sunset mocked, laughing as hard as she was capable of doing. Chrys just ignored it, and walked away, his dignity gone with his underpants.

Author's Note

Quite the shitty ending if I do say so myself.

...

No. Okay. I’ll go away now.

https://youtu.be/SQ9qi0Nxs04